Read The Tokyo-Montana Express Online

Authors: Richard Brautigan

The Tokyo-Montana Express

Published by

Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence

1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza

New York, N.Y. 10017

Portions of this work first appeared
in
Mademoiselle
,
Esquire
,
Outside
,
California Living
,
Earth
,
Evergreen
,
Triquarterly
,
New Ingenue
,
TheCoEvolution
Quarterly
,
New Orleans Review
,
San Francisco Stories
, and
The
Overland Journey of Joseph Francl
published by William P. Wreden.

A limited edition of
The
Tokyo-Montana Express
was published in different form by Targ Editions.

The author thanks them and
Playboy
(Japanese edition) for publishing his work.

Copyright © 1980 by Richard Brautigan

All rights reserved. No part of this
book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where
permitted by law.

Manufactured in the United States of
America

First printing

LIBRARY OF
CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Brautigan, Richard.

The Tokyo-Montana express.

I.       Title.

PS3503.R2736T64       813’.54      
80-17171

ISBN 0-440-08770-8

FOR RICHARD AND NANCY HODGE

Though the Tokyo-Montana Express moves
at a great speed, there are many stops along the way. This book is those brief
stations: some confident, others still searching for their identities.

The “I” in this book is the voice of the
stations along the tracks of the Tokyo-Montana Express.

THE ROUTE OF THE TOKYO-MONTANA EXPRESS:

The
Overland Journey of Joseph Francl and the Eternal Sleep of His Wife Antonia in
Crete, Nebraska

All the People
That I Didn’t Meet and the Places That I Didn’t Go

The Japanese
Squid Fishermen Are Asleep Now

The
Smallest Snowstorm on Record

A San Francisco
Snake Story

Football

Ice Age Cab Company

Shrine of Carp

Meat

Umbrellas

A Death in Canada

Autumn
Trout Gathering

Harmonica High

Winter Vacation

The Purpose

The
Irrevocable Sadness of Her Thank You

No Hunting
Without Permission

OPEN

Spiders Are in
the House

Very Good Dead
Friends

What Are You Going
to Do with 390 Photographs of Christmas Trees?

The Pacific
Ocean

Another
Texas Ghost Story

There Is No Dignity,
Only the Windswept Plains of Ankona

The Tomb of the
Unknown Friend

Cooking
Spaghetti Dinner in Japan

The Beacon

Blue Sky

An Eye for Good
Produce

Gone Before We Open
Our Eyes

Harem

Montana Love

Cat Cantaloupe

Al’s Rose
Harbor

Farewell to the
First Grade and Hello to the
National Enquirer

The Wolf Is Dead

The Closest I Have
Been to the Sea Since Evolution

Homage to
Groucho Marx

A Feeling of
Helplessness

One Arm Burning
in Tokyo

Rubber Bands

Werewolf
Raspberries

Toothbrush
Ghost Story

Skylab at the
Graves of Abbott and Costello

The Bed
Salesman

Tire Chain
Bridge

White

Montana
Traffic Spell

Hangover as
Folk Art

Marching in the
Opposite Direction of a Pizza

Dogs on the Roof

California
Mailman

The Cobweb Toy

Her Last Known
Boyfriend a Canadian Airman

The Butcher

To the Yotsuya
Station

A Safe Journey
Like This River

Parking Place
Lost

Studio 54

Crows Eating a
Truck Tire in the Dead of Winter

Something
Cooking

Cold
Kingdom Enterprise

The
Beautiful Oranges of Osaka

Drowned Japanese
Boy

The Great
Golden Telescope

The Man Who Shot
Jesse James

Dancing Feet

Seventeen
Dead Cats

Light on at the
Tastee-Freez

The Eyes of Japan

The Magic of
Peaches

Times Square in
Montana

Wind in the Ground

Tokyo Snow
Story

The Last of My
Armstrong Spring Creek Mosquito Bites

Clouds over
Egypt

Fantasy
Ownership

The Mill Creek
Penguins

A Reason for Living

1953 Chevrolet

My Fair Tokyo Lady

The Menu / 1965

The Convention

In Pursuit of the
Impossible Dream

The Old
Testament Book of the Telephone Company

Breakfast in
Beirut

Another
Montana School Gone to the Milky Way

Four People in
Their Eighties

My Fault

Florida

Ghosts

A Study in Thyme and
Funeral Parlors

Rabbits

A Different Way
of Looking at President Kennedy’s Assassination

Portrait of a
Marriage

Self-Portrait
as an Old Man

Beer Story

Homage to Rudi
Gernreich / 1965

Turkey and Dry
Breakfast Cereal Sonata

Old Man Working
the Rain

The
Remarkable Dining Cars of the Northern Pacific Railroad

Railroading
in Tokyo

Two
Montana Humidifiers

Contents for
Good Luck

Tod

Five Ice-Cream
Cones Running in Tokyo

The Good Work of
Chickens

Castle of the Snow
Bride

The Instant
Ghost Town

The Mouse

House of
Carpets

The 1977
Television Season

The Window

Painstaking
Popcorn Label

Imaginary
Beginning to Japan

Leaves

Waking Up Again

Poetry Will
Come to Montana on March 24th

Sunday

Japanese
Love Affair

Tap
Dancing Chickadee Slaves

Pleasures of
the Swamp

Sky Blue Pants

Kyoto, Montana

A Different or
the Same Drummer

When 3 Made Sense for
the First Time

A One-Frame
Movie about a Man Living in the 1970s

My Tokyo Friend

Chicken Fable

The Fence

Subscribers
to the Sun

The Overland Journey of
Joseph Francl and the
Eternal Sleep of His Wife Antonia
in Crete, Nebraska
PART 1: OFTEN CLOAKED LIKE TRICK OR TREATERS IN THE CASUAL

On the third day out from Lucky Ford
River we found a corpse almost eaten by wolves (which are very numerous here,
howl in concert at night and keep us awake) and scalped by the Indians… We
buried him and went on our way, with sorrowful thoughts. —Joseph Francl

Often, cloaked like trick or treaters in
the casual disguises of philosophical gossip, we wonder about the ultimate
meaning of a man’s life, and today I’m thinking about Joseph Francl: a man who
brought his future to America, God only knows why, from Czechoslovakia in 1851,
and completely used up that future to lie dead, facedown in the snow, not
unhappy in early December 1875, and then to be buried at Fort Klamath, Oregon,
in a grave that was lost forever.

I’ve read the surviving sections of a diary
that he kept on a long unsuccessful gold mining expedition that he took in 1854
from Wisconsin to California, and some letters that he wrote back from
California.

His diary is written in a mirror-like prose
that is simultaneously innocent and sophisticated and reflects a sense of gentle
humor and irony. He saw this land in his own way. I think it was an unusual
life that led him inevitably, like an awkward comet, to his diary and then
later to his death in America.

In the beginning Joseph Francl was the son
of a man who owned a brewery and a glassworks in Czechoslovakia, so he was
probably surrounded by a stable world of abundance.

He became a classical musician who studied
music at the Prague Conservatory and travelled with an orchestra that gave
concerts in Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Germany.

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